


Tightrope

by fancyasscheeseballs (girlattherockshow)



Series: An Unlikely Love: Rafael & Anna [12]
Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: F/M, Friendship, PTSD, Sexual Assault, Trauma, even the best training doesn't always help, in which we get to see rafael and olivia be friends with nothing weird between them, rape flashbacks, we love a platonic relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:34:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23904694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlattherockshow/pseuds/fancyasscheeseballs
Summary: All the love in the world can't turn back the clock and keep Anna safe, and it can't prevent the trauma from creeping back in. But we all need somebody to lean on, don't we?
Relationships: Rafael Barba/Original Character(s), Rafael Barba/Original Female Character(s)
Series: An Unlikely Love: Rafael & Anna [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1597711
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	Tightrope

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so I am putting a heavy trigger warning here for descriptions of sexual assault and trauma.
> 
> This chapter goes into the details of Anna’s assault. I haven’t dealt much with it in previous chapters because I didn’t want it to be a plot device that I relied on. It was just how they met. But given recent events in my own life, plus the anniversary of my own sexual assault (22 years ago; I was barely a teenager), I thought it would be a good time to go into it. 
> 
> Shit sometimes brings this kind of thing back, and it can be the most mundane of things: an offhand remark by a friend who didn’t intend anything by it; the way someone’s hair looks from the back; a smell or a taste or even the way someone says your name. PTSD doesn’t always make sense, and it isn’t always consistent. I hadn’t had a panic attack/flashback for a decade and then suddenly two years ago I had one because someone walked by who used the same soap as my rapist. I still don’t know what soap it is. I just know its smell, and so does my brain. The title of this chapter comes from that feeling - like you’re walking a tightrope every day, waiting for the fall.
> 
> So, anyway, all this to say, this is a chapter that not only gives you her whole backstory but also was therapeutic for me. I understand, though, if some of you don’t want to read it. You won’t lose any major plot points if you don’t, and I certainly wouldn’t blame you (although I also wouldn’t blame you for not reading any chapter, lol). But if you do, please be gentle with any criticism. I’m usually all for improving my writing, but this chapter is… different, I guess.
> 
> Song: Hold Her Closer by Blessid Union of Souls. It’s one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard, and I’m not exaggerating. It reminds me of my best friend and how he treated me when he saw me go through what Anna went through. And every single word of it applies to this chapter, for both Rafael and Anna.

Life was blissfully normal, and Rafael and Anna wouldn’t have had it any other way.

After their engagement party, they returned to their everyday life. Rafael was knee deep in new cases and happy to have restored his standing with Jack McCoy, if not his fearsome reputation with everyone else. He didn’t much care; he was happy, and if that meant he was slightly less terrifying to the administrative staff and other prosecutors, that was fine with him. Defense attorneys still knew who they were up against when they saw his name on pleadings. In fact, he became even more tenacious in court, with a renewed vigor that came from having—and almost losing—everything he wanted in life.

Meanwhile, Anna struggled through the rest of the semester and had emerged victorious. She ended up taking bankruptcy on a pass/fail basis, and with Sonny’s help, she’d pulled a B in corporations. More importantly, she and Rafael’s self-appointed protégé had developed a great friendship, and he had invited her and Rafael to his parents’ house on Staten Island for the Fourth of July.

Unsurprisingly, the Carisi family welcomed them with open arms, and they’d spent a wonderful, clear-skied day barbecuing and playing with Sonny’s nieces. Watching Rafael and Sonny wave Sparklers with the girls was enough to melt Anna like the popsicle she’d been eating while watching them. She also immediately bonded with Sonny’s little sister, Bella, who was pregnant with the long-awaited grandson that the elder Dominick Carisi had dreamed of. At dusk, they climbed onto the flat roof of the house and watched the fireworks set off from a nearby park. When Sonny’s youngest niece curled up in Anna’s lap, Rafael couldn’t help but imagine a future that now included a child of their own.

When they made love that night, he kissed her so much that both their lips were chapped for two days.

It was worth it.

Soon, the muggy air chilled, and brightly colored leaves fell from the trees to float on Turtle Pond. As far as Anna was concerned, autumn in the city was the best time of year. She never understood why tourists liked visiting in the summer, because it was too hot to enjoy the outdoors and too crowded to enjoy the museums. Plus, thanks to the humidity, trash day was even worse than usual. There were things she liked about warmer weather, of course, but she would gladly take boots and tights over sandals and shorts any day.

“Classes still going okay?” Rafael asked her as they strolled through Washington Square Park one Saturday in early October. 

“Well, I feel like I’m learning things that might actually be useful,” she replied, putting her gloves on as they walked. “Lawyering skills is pretty cool. The moot court argument for the final _still_ terrifies me, though.

“Oh, come on. You’ve learned from the best.”

“How humble of you,” she laughed. “Anyway, as far as estates and trusts…I’m mostly bored. I feel like that’s a whole lot of common sense wrapped up in legalese.”

“What about evidence?”

“It’s interesting.” The truth was that she hated the class. She knew it was important, that every lawyer used those rules at some point or another, but that didn’t mean she had to like learning about them. “But I’ve skipped ahead a few chapters in the book, and I’m afraid. I’m very afraid.”

“You know that I deal with the rules of evidence every day, right?”

“I know, honey. But you don’t need to—”

“I’m happy to,” he finished. “If I can be helpful, I want to be helpful.”

She linked her arm around his. “Right now, all you need to do is be present, in this moment, with me.”

The leaves rustled and blew across the pavement. He held his scarf tighter around his neck. “It’s getting late, and cold. Coffee?”

“It’s five o’clock!” she laughed.

“And?”

She shook her head in amusement. “How do you even sleep?”

He stopped walking and wrapped his arms around her waist, drawing him into her. He grazed her ear with his lips. “It’s not the caffeine that keeps me awake at night, _mi amor_.”

She wondered if there would ever be a day when the rumble of his voice wouldn’t send a jolt between her thighs. “Could be both,” she said, “but let’s get tea and find out for sure.”

* * *

The next day, Sonny and Anna were sitting at her dining room table, two cups of coffee between them. He glanced up at her from the outline he was holding, blue eyes twinkling. “Okay, tell me the rules for introducing evidence of the defendant’s character in criminal cases.”

Anna hesitated and looked toward the ceiling, trying to dig into the filing cabinets of her brain. There were so many damned rules that she wondered how Rafael ever managed to practice criminal law from memory. “I…I don’t know, Sonny.”

“Yes you do,” he said. “Come on, Anna, you know this. I know you do.”

She scrunched up her face, concentrating. “Okay. Okay, in criminal cases, the defendant can introduce evidence of his good character. The prosecution can’t introduce character evidence except in sexual assault or child molestation cases, or if the defendant offers character evidence first.”

“Good! Now tell me about what the defendant can bring in. What’re the guidelines?”

“Um…”

“Put it another way. We got a guy on trial for assault. What kinda character evidence can he bring in to show he’s not guilty, and how?”

She took a gulp of coffee. “Well, he could bring a witness to testify about his reputation for nonviolence.”

“Why?”

“Because his reputation for nonviolence is relevant to the case?”

“And what happens if he _does_ bring in a witness to testify to that? What can Rafael do about it?”

“Um…” She closed her eyes and imagined Rafael in the courtroom, pacing slowly from the jury box to the witness stand. She had heard him prepare more than one cross examination and imagined him cross examining a witness for the defense, the questions he might ask. God, she loved watching him work…

“Anna? You with me?”

The sound of Sonny’s voice broke her out of her fantasy, but at least she had gotten to the answer. “He can cross the witness about specific instances relating to the character evidence the defendant brought. Or he could bring evidence to contradict that witness.”

Sonny held up his hand for a high five. “See? You know this stuff. Soon, you’ll be able to go up against your fiancé in court.”

“Hardly!” she laughed. “I’m starting to understand why he drinks so much coffee.”

He tossed the outline on the table. “Break time?”

“Sure. Raf should be home soon anyway.” She got up to get a couple glasses of water. “Oh, by the way, here’s some fun news. Michelle may be coming to town for the holidays.”

Sonny inhaled his coffee just as Anna brought the water back to the table. He took a glass from her hand and drank a large sip of it. When he got his breath back, he said, “Well, at least this will be a happier occasion than last time she—” He stopped, horrified when he realized what he’d started to say. “Oh, hey, Anna, I’m—”

“It’s okay,” she said, but he saw her blink a few more times than she should have.

He reached out and put a hand on her forearm. “Seriously, Anna, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” Rafael said, striding into the kitchen. Neither Anna nor Sonny had heard him come in. Anna was slightly unnerved by that.

“Oh,” Sonny said, “I just was telling Anna that I won’t be able to come over this Wednesday like I’d planned. Gina needs me to babysit.”

Rafael kissed Anna on the top of her head. “Is she the pregnant one?”

“No, that’s Bella,” she replied. “Gina’s the tall brunette.”

“Oh, right. Anyway, how’d studying go today?”

Sonny was thankful for the change of subject. “Booyah, Fordham Law!” he said, high fiving Anna again.

Rafael sighed. “That’s it, you two aren’t allowed to play together anymore.” He took his jacket off and laid it over the back of the couch before turning back to Sonny. “You staying for dinner?”

Sonny checked his watch. “Sorry. I told Liv I’d cover the overnight shift.”

“You sure?” Anna asked. “You’re more than welcome.”

It was her kind, subtle way of confirming that she wasn’t upset with him. He smiled, satisfied that she wasn’t just trying to be polite. “I appreciate it, but Liv’ll kill me if I’m late. Feel free to have my slice.”

“Well, we’re not ordering sun-dried tomato and goat cheese or whatever the hell it is you get,” Rafael said, “so I’ll definitely have your slice.”

Sonny rolled his eyes. “How do you not like artisan pizza?” he asked. “You used to live in Brooklyn.”

“Why do you think I moved to Manhattan?” Rafael replied.

Anna handed Sonny his coat. “Well, as usual, I appreciate your help,” she said. “Same time next week?”

“You got it.” He clapped Rafael, who was pouring himself a glass of scotch, on the back. “See ya.” Rafael gave him a nod in response and watched him walk down the hallway and out the door. He turned back to Anna.

“Did I say something?”

“What?” she replied, the phone to her ear. “What’d you—oh, hello? Hi, yes, I need to place a delivery order…” He leaned against the counter, nursing his scotch, until she hung up. “I’m sorry, honey. What did you say?”

“Carisi just seemed like he was in a hurry to get out of here. Did I say something to upset him, do you think? The comment about his sister?”

She played with the end of her ponytail, which was draped over her shoulder. She didn’t want to repeat what Sonny had said to Rafael. It wasn’t a big deal to her, but she knew he would get more concerned than he needed to be. Plus, he and Sonny had finally formed a tentative friendship and she didn’t want to do anything to interfere with it. So, she hedged.

“I don’t think you upset him. I think he just isn’t looking forward to doing the overnight. Especially after going through the rules of evidence all afternoon.”

He considered this. “I suppose that’s possible. Rules of evidence are enough to put anyone in a bad mood.” He took a seat at the table and glanced at her coffee cup. “Coffee this late? Are you turning into me?”

“You _are_ a bad influence,” she said, smiling, “but no. It’s decaf.”

He made a face. “Why even bother?”

“Because I didn’t think it was a stellar idea to try and memorize anything while drinking wine?”

“Okay,” he laughed, “that’s fair. What time did they say the pizza would be here?”

She checked her watch. “Probably about forty-five minutes. And yes, you have time for a shower.”

“You know me too well.” He polished off his scotch and set the glass on the counter, fully intent on having a second round after he washed the day off. He gave her a quick kiss as she opened her estates and trusts book. “Be back in a few.”

“Yeah, ‘a few.’ Sure,” she called. “If the pizza gets here before you’re back, I’m eating all of it without you!”

She heard him mutter some sort of response in Spanish, but just shook her head and went back to her book. _A donative transfer is procured by duress if the wrongdoer threatened to perform or did perform a wrongful act that coerced the donor into making a donative transfer that the donor would not otherwise have made…_

Thirty minutes later, Rafael wandered back into the kitchen, his hair still damp. Anna was exactly where he’d left her, except now she was reading one of the myriad paperbacks she kept on her nightstand.

“Give up for the night?”

She didn’t look up. “More like I was defeated. I stared at the same sentence for ten minutes without even really reading it,” she replied. “A sentence shouldn’t be allowed to have more than twenty words, by the way.”

He laughed. “That would kill half of my opening arguments. So what’re you reading instead?”

“‘Helter Skelter.’ You know, light reading.”

“You and your true crime. Just come hang out in my office for a day.”

“Been there, done that.” It wasn’t accusatory, but he still winced at the implication. Before he could say anything, there was a knock at the door. “Pizza’s here!”

Every time they had a pizza delivered, she got so excited that she nearly bounced out of her chair. She said she couldn’t help it, that it reminded her of sleepovers with her childhood friends. After they’d returned from California, she’d told him that Jakey was part of those sleepovers sometimes. Rafael suspected the pizza reminded her more of time with her brother than her friends, and he was happy she shared those memories with him.

He started toward the door. “Do you want me to—”

“Nah, my purse is right there.” She gestured toward the table near the entryway. “I got it.”

He went into the kitchen to get plates and heard the door open. Anna said something, and then a minute later, the door slammed. But she didn’t join him, so he rounded the corner toward the front door. “ _Mi amor,_ did you forget where the kitchen—”

He stopped before he made it even halfway down the hall. She was standing by the door, staring at the pizza box in her hands. It didn’t seem like she knew he was there, so he approached her carefully. “Anna? Are you okay?”

It was then that he noticed her breathing had quickened. Her chest began to heave, and her hands were gripping the box like it was the only thing keeping her upright. The expression on her face was a strange concoction of distress, focus, and confusion.

He may not have ever seen that expression on _her_ face, but he had seen it before. He’d been trained to recognize it, in fact. He knew what was happening and he had been to classes to learn how to deal with it. But all that training seemed to disappear when he instinctively touched her shoulder.

The scream she let out was unlike anything he’d heard from her before. “Don’t!” she shouted. “Don’t, don’t, don’t, DON’T, _DON’T_!!”

She dropped the pizza box and collapsed next to it, suddenly feeling very dizzy and disoriented. It was like she was falling through the floor but there was no bottom to reach. Time stood still and sped up at the same time, and all she could feel was the tightening of her muscles and the breath leaving her lungs like someone had punched her in the chest.

He mentally kicked himself for his mistake and crouched down next to her. “Anna,” he said, as calmly as he could through his own fear, “Anna, it’s okay. It’s okay. It’s Raf. I love you.”

Everything tingled, like she wasn’t getting enough air. Blood pounded in her ears and although she felt tears falling down her cheeks, she couldn’t seem to make her hands work well enough to wipe them away. Her arms were instead wrapped around her knees, hugging them to herself protectively.

“I—I can’t—”

He kept his voice soft and steady, relying on the logical half of his brain to control the emotional half. “You’re safe. It’s over. He’s not here.”

She was rocking back and forth on the floor and it was killing him not to be able to touch her. But her reaction last time made it clear that he couldn’t do that. So he just sat down next to her. “Anna? Anna, look at me.” She didn’t. “Anna, can you just—nod if you hear me.”

She nodded. _Okay,_ he thought, _progress._

“Take a breath for me.” She shook her head, and he was worried she was going to pass out. “Come on, Anna, please. Just take a deep breath.” He took one first, hoping she’d follow along. Then he took another, and another, until he finally saw her breathing pattern change. Through her sobs, she managed to inhale as he counted to four. “That’s good,” he said. “That’s good, _mi amor_.”

But then she went right back to hyperventilating. He didn’t know what to do. Nothing he’d learned was working. Or maybe he wasn’t doing enough because he was so afraid of doing the wrong thing. So he did what he was best at: he kept talking.

“Anna, it’s Rafael. It’s your fiancé. We’re in our apartment.” His eyes darted between her face and her shoulders as he tried to time her breathing. “We were about to have pizza. You were reading a book.” He started to struggle with terror’s grasp, because she didn’t seem to be calming down at all. “Come on, sweetheart. Be present. Be in the moment. Be with me.”

At that, she turned her eyes up to meet his. And as if she only just recognized him, she threw herself against his chest, sobbing into his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she cried. “I didn’t mean to—God, _I’m sorry_.”

He ran his hands over her arms and held her for a while, whispering words of comfort over and over. “It’s okay,” he said, more times than he could count. “It’s okay, Anna.”

Her head was pounding by then. Everything ached, and she still couldn’t seem to stop crying, but at least her lungs felt like they were expanding again. The floor was beneath her feet, her heart was in her chest, and she could see Rafael’s face instead of the nightmare behind her eyes.

Eventually she pulled away from him and took a deep, shaky breath. “I’m—oh, God, Raf, I’m so sorry.”

He lifted her chin so he could look into her eyes, bloodshot though they were. “It’s okay, Anna. You don’t have to apologize to me. You’re safe. It’s over.” He cocked his head. “Do you want some water? Kleenex? Pizza?”

She glanced at the box on the floor behind him and let out a muffled laugh. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“Sweetheart, I’m kidding. Stop apologizing,” he replied. “Seriously. Can I get you something?”

“Um…could I maybe have some water?”

He smiled. “I think we’ve got some of that around here.”

He got to his feet, picking up the pizza box as well. A minute later he returned with a glass of ice water. She took it gratefully and drank it all at once. “Thank you. My throat’s killing me.”

“I’m not surprised. Do you think you can stand?”

She nodded and he held out his hand to her. When she got to her feet, she felt a bit lightheaded and used him for balance. He put an arm around her waist to support her and walked her to the bedroom which, thankfully, was not far from the door. She collapsed onto the bed as soon as he let her go, exhaustion overtaking her.

“Do you think it’d be okay if I just napped for a few hours?” she asked.

He glanced at the nightstand clock. “Sweetheart, it’s already nine-thirty. Why don’t you just go to sleep? I’ll be along soon.”

“You’re right,” she said. Her eyes darted toward the dresser where she kept her pajamas. “Could you—”

“I’ve got it.” He rummaged through the drawer and handed her a pair of well-worn cotton lounge pants and a tank top. “You gonna be okay to get into these by yourself?”

She nodded. “I’ll be fine.”

“I’m going to get you another glass of water. Do you need anything else?”

“I’m really okay, Raf.” She said the words, but there was no energy behind them. The attack had taken more out of her than she was letting on. “I just need to sleep, I think.”

“Okay,” he said, suspicion heavy in his voice. She changed into the pajamas and he kissed her on the forehead. “If you need anything…”

She nodded. “Thank you.”

He got up to leave, turned off the lights, and was about to shut the door when she called his name, almost a whisper. “Raf?”

“Yeah?”

“It was the soap.”

Her voice was small, almost frail, in a tone he’d never heard before and that he never wanted to have to hear again. He furrowed his brow and turned back around. “What?”

She was still sitting on the edge of the bed, running a hand over the comforter. “It was the soap. That’s what caused it.”

He was still confused. “The soap?”

“The delivery guy—when he leaned in to hand me the pizza, I could smell his soap…”

She trailed off and he realized what she was trying to tell him. He didn’t know how to respond so he just watched as she crawled beneath the blanket, sinking under the cover of darkness.

Back in the kitchen, he opened the pizza box to see if it had survived the crash. A couple slices remained intact, so he downed one of them. It was only when he put the plate into the sink that he realized how shaky he was. He didn’t quite understand why; Anna was the one who had the panic attack. It wasn’t his memory to relive. All he’d done was what he always did when she was upset—try to comfort her and tell her he loved her. But he felt unnerved by the events of the evening.

Half an hour passed. He took a shot of whiskey, hoping to calm his nerves. It didn’t work. He tried to watch Flip or Flop, but he couldn’t focus on either the flipping or the flopping. Something just didn’t feel right.

It pained him to do it, but he had to talk to someone. There was only one person who _might_ understand what he was going through.

She answered her phone on the first ring. “Rafa? It’s ten thirty. What’s wrong?” Her voice was urgent, weighty with concern.

He hesitated. “Liv. Hi. I—can I come over?”

Her voice softened with concern. “Of course. Are you all right?”

“I just, um…I just need to talk. You sure it’s okay?”

“Of course, it’s fine. I’ll have the scotch ready to go,” she said, hoping to make him smile. Unfortunately, it didn’t work.

“I’ll see you in a bit.”

He scrawled out a note to Anna, letting her know where he was in case she woke up. Then he grabbed his coat and took off into the night, heading for a safe place to land.

* * *

It took another half an hour for him to get to Olivia’s apartment. Ordinarily, he would have called a Lyft, but instead, he opted for the subway. He didn’t feel like making idle chit chat with a driver, but always felt rude if he didn’t. At least on the subway, he had to pay attention to the stops rather than what was in his head.

He remembered when Olivia and Amanda had first brought Anna to his office. The first thing he noticed about her was something ridiculous—it was her leopard print scarf. The same one, in fact, that she had been wearing just a few days ago when they were walking through the park. He didn’t know why that was what stuck out. After that, of course, he focused on what had happened to her, the rape kit, the photos, and preparing her testimony.

Jonathan Bennett was the CEO of a Fortune 500 financial company and Anna had been his assistant. She had only been living in New York for a few months then, and she had just gotten the job to pay the rent until she figured out what she wanted to do. The rest was such a cliché that it might have been a television script. Bennett came on to her a few times in the first month she worked there, but she had always turned him down. Then, one night, she was working late, and he’d trapped her in her own office. The asshole was too stupid to have used a condom, so of course, he tried to claim it was consensual—admit what you can’t deny, deny what you can’t admit—but the jury didn’t buy it. He was sentenced to fifteen years, and that had been that.

Or so he had thought.

Once he was off the 86th Street exit, it took him three minutes to get to her apartment and by the time he reached the door, he felt like he’d run a mile. He stood outside for a minute, now debating whether or not he should even knock. Was he betraying Anna’s trust by being here? Should he not tell anyone about what had happened? Maybe he should just turn right around and head home before she woke up and realized he’d abandoned—

“Rafa?”

He knew from the way Olivia’s eyes narrowed on his face that he must have looked terrible. “Hey, Liv.”

“Come on in.” She stepped aside so that he could come in. He handed her his coat and she hung it in on a coat rack near the door. “You want something to drink?”

“Actually, just water,” he replied. She raised an eyebrow but went to the kitchen, grabbing both wine and water glasses from the cupboard.

He always loved Olivia’s apartment. Since she adopted Noah, she’d made it such a warm, inviting place. The walls were adorned with plein air paintings—a favorite of hers—and framed drawings that Noah had made. He wandered over toward the bookcase on the right-hand wall of the living room. There were a dozen framed photographs perched on various shelves, of Olivia and Noah mostly. But the one he focused on was taken at the precinct’s holiday party, just six months before his first date with Anna. It was a candid shot, of him and Olivia; her radiant smile lighting up the room as the two of them laughed together. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember what they were laughing at, but he _did_ remember the pang of loneliness he felt when he’d gone home to an empty apartment that night. It wasn’t that he and Olivia ever had a romantic relationship, or that he even wanted one with her. It was more that he wished he had someone to laugh like that with all the time.

His memory-laden trance was broken by Olivia clearing her throat behind him. He turned and she handed him a tall glass of water. “I know you take your scotch neat,” she said, “but since you’re drinking the really hard stuff tonight, I added ice.”

It was another attempt to get him to smile, but his reply was mirthless. “Thanks.”

They took a seat on the couch and sat in silence for a minute, nursing their drinks. That was the thing he loved most about Olivia—she would never push him to talk until he was ready. She might small talk around the issue, but she would wait for him to get to the heart of it.

“So, you got that warrant we asked for last Thursday?” she finally asked.

He laughed. “Yep, that’s why I’m here. I have a judge in my pocket, and you can swear it out right now.”

She smiled and set down her wine. “We can sit here as long as you want, Rafa.” It was both a hint and an offer.

He stared at the glass in his hand, watched the beads of sweat drip down its sides. He downed the remainder of its contents, the ice taking hold of his chest for a minute, and then set the glass aside. “I’m not really sure how to say this.”

She tilted her head. “The great Rafael Barba doesn’t have the words for something?”

“I’m serious, Liv,” he said. “There’s—I don’t even know if I should be here.”

“Why?”

He glanced away. “Because I don’t know if it’s my place to talk about it.”

“Is it about Anna?”

“Am I that obvious?”

She shook her head. “No, but I can’t imagine any other reason you’d be here at”—she checked her watch—“eleven-thirty at night. Did you two have an argument?”

“What? No!” He said it louder than he’d intended, and he hoped he hadn’t woken Noah—not just because he’d feel bad about Noah being woken up, but, selfishly, because he wanted Olivia’s full attention. Olivia clearly had the same concern—although not for the selfish reasons he did—and glanced over her shoulder to make sure there was no stirring from Noah’s bedroom. “Sorry,” he said.

“I’ll forgive you if you tell me what’s going on.”

He took a deep breath and exhaled the entire story, from his arrival home that evening to closing the bedroom door to let Anna sleep. All the while, Olivia listened as carefully as she always did; active listening was now second nature to her. She watched the way his eyes moved, the way the veins in his arms jumped. Although she was deeply saddened by the details of his story, she was glad for the fact that he was so expressive in so many ways.

When he finished, he found himself exhausted in a way that sleep would never alleviate. “When I left, she was out like a light,” he said, “but I left her a note just in case. I don’t even know if that was the right thing to do.”

Olivia didn’t respond right away. Instead, she got up, grabbed his water glass, and went back to the kitchen. She was back a minute later and handed it to him. “Felt like you might want another round.”

He hadn’t realized how dry his throat was until then. He’d talked himself out, literally. When he finished drinking, he said, “Okay, I know you have thoughts. Let me have them.”

“I’m more interested in how _you’re_ feeling about all this,” she said. “We both know this is something survivors experience from time to time.”

He gave her a look that was somewhere between pained and resigned. “Liv, do you know how many trainings I’ve had on how to handle survivor panic attacks? I’ve even had to use it before. You remember Katie Meyer’s case?”

“Yeah, I remember,” she replied. “Wasn’t that Buchanan too?”

“It’s _always_ Buchanan.” He sipped his water. “After his cross, I could tell she was going to lose it, so I got a recess. I took her back into the witness room and got her to breathe. I told her to look around and tell me what she was seeing. I told her that the rape was over, and it wasn’t happening again. I said and did everything my training told me to do. She came back, got on the stand for redirect, and we put the guy away.”

“And you did the same things tonight for Anna.”

“I did. And eventually, she came back. But…”

Olivia cocked her head. “But what?”

“It’s not that I didn’t care about Katie,” he said. “I did. But I guess I never really let myself emotionally go there.”

“Go where?”

“To that place, you know, where I…” He sighed. “I can talk about the facts. I can use the medical records. I can go through their stories. But I never wanted to…”

“Feel their pain?” Olivia finished.

His eyes were pools of sorrow. “Anna’s my fiancée. It was instinct for me to try to comfort her and put my arms around her. But even touching her shoulder made her scream. Do you know hard that was for me?” Then he shook his head, rebuking himself. “Listen to me. I’m making it about me when it’s about her—”

“Hey,” Olivia said, her eyebrows drawn together. “You’re allowed to have feelings about this. It’s hard supporting someone who’s been through an assault. You think it wasn’t hard for Brian to see what I went through after Lewis?”

“I know,” he replied. “But he didn’t make it about him, did he?”

“But you’re not asking her to deal with your feelings. Just like Brian never asked me to deal with his,” she said. “You did what she needed you to do, and now you’re asking someone else to help _you_. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

He sighed heavily. “You want to know the worst part? We’ve been together for so long that sometimes I forget how we met. It’s the first time it’s really _hit_ me. It was like I was watching her go through it in real time. And I just…”

It was so long ago, and there had been so many cases in between, that until that night, he’d largely forgotten the details. Or maybe he had tried to put them out of his mind. He looked down, biting his lip to keep the tears in.

She put her hand on his shoulder, and he flinched just slightly. “Come on. Nothing you say will shock me; I promise you.”

“It’s just—how—she was _raped_ , Liv. She was violated in the ugliest, most violent way, and now—how can she—” He couldn’t control it any longer; he finally let himself cry in front of someone other than Anna. “How can she stand it?”

Olivia tried to keep an impassive face. She knew he didn’t want pity. He needed strength. “Stand what?”

He never thought in a million years he would be discussing his and Anna’s sex life with anyone, in _any_ context, but there was no other way to ask what he needed to ask. He looked at his best friend with wet, wide eyes. “How can she stand having sex with me? How can she even let me touch her?”

She drew in a deep breath and let it out with a whoosh. “Rafael, you know rape isn’t about sex.”

“I know that. But how can she enjoy being with me when the last person who—”

“Because you aren’t him. Because she loves you. Because she trusts you. Because she got therapy and learned to cope,” she said. “You know, people have this idea about how survivors feel about physical intimacy in the aftermath of their trauma. They think someone who’s been assaulted can’t enjoy sex, or that they can only enjoy certain _kinds_ of sex. But learning to be physically intimate with someone is part of the healing process. More often than not, survivors look at it as reclaiming a part of their life that was taken from them.”

He remembered when Anna had asked him to help her do exactly that. His head knew everything Olivia had said was true. But his heart was having trouble catching up. He scratched the back of his head. “I’ve been doing this for years, and I always kept survivors at arms’ length for this very reason. I always figured that if I let them affect me emotionally, I wouldn’t be able to do my job effectively.”

“I used to feel that way, too. And to some extent, I still do. But I think I actually got better at my job when I started to see survivors as humans rather than statistics or cases.” Then, she gave him the head tilt and squint he’d come to know so well over the years, like she was studying him. “Do you regret letting Anna in?”

That was easy to answer. “No. Not for a second. Never.”

Then she asked him something that she figured he’d asked himself before. “Why do you think you did? After so many years of distancing yourself, what made her special?”

He closed his eyes for a second and pictured her, asleep in their bed. Her hair was in a low, loose ponytail, lips slightly parted. He’d never told her, but she snored lightly—nothing that would keep him from sleeping, just enough so he knew she was still breathing. She hugged the pillow and huddled toward the edge of the bed; half the time he wondered why they even bought a king when they both ended up on her side of it by morning. And although she said she never remembered her dreams, sometimes he wondered if she ever dreamed of him before they were together. That was when he realized the answer to Olivia’s question.

He opened his eyes. “About two months after you sent her to my office,” he said, “I had this dream about her. At the time, I didn’t think much of it. I thought maybe it was just, I don’t know, the fact that we were spending so much time together. I haven’t even thought about it since then…”

“Go on,” Olivia urged him.

He looked toward the floor and squinted a little, as if trying to envision it. “In the dream, she had finished applying to law school. And one day, she called me and told me she’d gotten an acceptance letter and wanted to celebrate with me. So we went to the same place we had dinner the first time we—I guess, really, that was our first date, even if we didn’t know it at the time.”

“Coppelia, right?”

“Yeah. You know it?”

“She told Amanda. I guess Amanda mentioned it to Carisi. Carisi brought us all flan the next day.”

He shook his head and smirked. “Why does that not surprise me? Anyway, in my dream, we were at dinner, and I made some comment about not being able to make fun of Fordham Law anymore. And she got this look on her face and pulled out an envelope from her bag and slid it across the table at me. It was from Harvard.”

Olivia tried to contain a smile. “Did she actually apply to Harvard?”

“No. I remember Dream Me looking at the envelope and looking at Dream Anna and saying, ‘I didn’t know you wanted to go to Harvard,’ and she said something like, ‘You talk so much about it that I thought I might as well give it a shot.’ I don’t remember exactly. But she got in. And she started asking me about places to live. And”—he swallowed a lump in his throat that he hadn’t even realized had formed—“when I woke up, it was still dark, and I remember the first thought I had.”

“Which was?”

“That I needed to ask her if she applied to Harvard. Because the only thing I could think was how much I would miss her if she went that far away.”

The smile Olivia had contained earlier finally crept across her face. “So, I’ll ask again. Why did you let her in?”

He shrugged. “It wasn’t a decision I made. She was just there one day.”

She pushed her hair away from her face and tucked her legs underneath herself. “Do you know if Anna dated anyone between the time of her assault and when you two started dating?”

He shook his head. “She said once that she didn’t want to have to explain anything to anyone.” His eyes flickered with a sudden understanding. “She didn’t want to explain _this_ to anyone.”

She nodded. “I’ve been doing this a long time, Rafael, and I’ve probably seen every reaction a survivor can possibly have. I’m no psychologist, but if I had to guess? You made it safe for her to let herself love you before she even kissed you.”

He suddenly felt a pang deep within himself and stood up abruptly. “Liv, I—”

“I’ll get your coat.” She headed to the coat rack. He followed behind her and gave her a sheepish smile.

“I’m sorry for rushing out. I just—”

She gave him the smile he’d come to know so well over the years, one that he didn’t see often enough because of their work. “Go home and hug your fiancée.” She opened the door and stepped aside so he could leave. “And Rafa?”

He shrugged his coat on and turned to look at her from the hallway. “Yeah?”

“Be careful going home.” He raised an inquisitive eyebrow and she winked at him. “We always joke that you drink scotch like it’s water. I’m worried actual water might get you drunk.”

For the first time that night, Rafael laughed, grateful not only for his best friend’s quick wit but also her joyful heart.

* * *

“Raf? What time is it?”

He had tried to be quiet when he finally came to bed, but Anna had never been a heavy sleeper, and was likely feeling particularly jumpy that evening. “I’m sorry, _mi amor_ ,” he whispered as he pulled the covers over himself. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

She sat up, eyes half-full of slumber. “Are you okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I got up to brush my teeth earlier. Found your note,” she yawned.

He had completely forgotten he’d even left that note. “I’m sorry for leaving you alone. I just needed to—”

She settled down onto her pillow and felt him spoon up against her back. “It’s okay. It’s not like she doesn’t know what happened to me.” His arms and his cologne wrapped around her, soothing as a weighted blanket. “You don’t need to explain,” she added, before beginning to drift back to sleep.

 _That makes two of us,_ he thought, making a mental note to tell her the next day how glad he was that she _didn’t_ get into Harvard.


End file.
